It was November 4, 1922, and another hot day in the Valley of the Kings. It was always hot, and dry, and dusty. But the Valley had yielded countless finds and many treasures, so the heat and aridity did not stop industrious diggers from their pursuits.

The British Egyptologist Howard Carter was just the latest in several generations of archaeologists who had been exploring the Valley in their search for tombs of the great kings of ancient Egypt’s glittering New Kingdom (1550-1069 BCE). He had been digging in Egypt since 1891, but his main pursuit since the days following World War I was the tomb of a little-known pharaoh named Tutankhamun. They had found a handful of his statues, they had seen his name on monuments, but where was he buried?

Carter’s sponsor was the British noble Lord Carnarvon (George Herbert), and it was Carnarvon who was financing Carter’s search for Tutankhamun. But Carnarvon was getting tired of shelling out his fortunes for so little gain, and this dig in November 1922 was in fact Carter’s last chance. It was supposed to have ended already, but Carter had talked Carnarvon into one last season.

So imagine Carter’s amazement on that dusty day when one more sink of the pickaxe struck a stone step under the sand. Clearing the sand away, they found a stairway that descended below ground to a door—and that door still bore the necropolis seals. This tomb promised to be intact.

The discovery of this tomb, designated KV62 according to the ordering system in the Valley, is the stuff of archaeological legend. We needn’t dwell on it here. There is a mountain of literature about the discovery and tomb clearing, and I would refer to the reader to most any book written by a reputable historian or researcher.

The opened door to the tomb. Carter is second from the right; Carnarvon is to Carter’s right.

Suffice it to say, Carter and his team spent years clearing almost 5,400 artifacts from this small tomb: foodstuffs, furniture, jewelry, shrines, statues, chariots. funerary items, and of course his mummy. It was like a neglected garage that had never been cleaned. It certainly made Carter famous, and although he never dug again, he spent much of the rest of his life on the lecture circuit, recounting his glories to enthralled audiences all over Europe and the United States.

Carter was the right man for the excavation. He was disciplined and meticulous. He and his team labeled, photographed, and plotted every last object retrieved from the tomb. You can see pretty much all of it on the Griffith Institute’s website Anatomy of an Excavation. At the same time, Carter was a challenging man to work with. He didn’t seem to care much for most people and disliked crowds even more so. The media was little more than a nuisance to him, so he was overly selective in whom he allowed to cover his excavation efforts. He certainly did not get along well with the Egyptian government, nor did the government care much for him.

The discovery caused a sensation the world over, so this must not have sat well with Carter in some ways. Every day people stopped by to watch the work, and Carter was often stopping his progress to give impromptu tours to important Europeans on holiday in Egypt. Carter was aware of the excitement his discovery was causing, but he would rather he and his team have been left to their own devices.

So I sometimes wonder what Howard Carter would think of people’s fascination with Tutankhamun today. Working in two different, beautiful ancient Egypt exhibits in Chicago, I am not surprised by how often the subject of King Tut comes up. If the average person thinks of an object that represents the glory and mystery of ancient Egypt, I’m willing to bet the Great Pyramid is what comes to mind. If the average person thinks of an individual, it is likely to be King Tut.

There is an irony to this. To those of us today, Tutankhamun might seem to be the most famous king from ancient Egypt. But in point of fact, Tut was a fairly minor king. He was at the end of a long line of very powerful kings we call the Tuthmosides. To this line belongs some truly powerful kings revered by later generations of Egyptians, such as Tuthmosis I, Tuthmosis III, and Amunhotep III. Also in this line are highly controversial and endlessly fascinating kings like Hatshepsut and Akhenaten, who were erased from history by later kings. And of course later there were powerful kings like Ramesses II, against whom Tutankhamun did not measure up.

Tutankhamun just did not live long enough. He came to throne around 1343 BCE and was only around nine years old. He was dead ten years later. So he simply didn’t have the longevity to accomplish much and make a name for himself. Added to this was his association with the oddball king Akhenaten, the heretic who proscribed the worship of many traditional gods. Later kings wiped out Akhenaten’s memory, and part of that memory was the boy Tutankhamun. This is why so little had been found by archaeologists by Carter’s time.

Nevertheless, today King Tut is one of the most recognizable icons of pharaonic times. The exhibits featuring artifacts from his tomb pack in millions of people the world over. I worked one of them at the Field Museum in 2006. It was at our museum for eight months and brought a million people just through our doors. There are countless books about King Tut, both non-fiction and fiction, there are movies—there is a whole pop-culture craze that swirls around this dead boy king. I have a tissue dispenser in the shape of Tut’s famous death mask: the tissues come out of his nose.

King Tut in the 2014 film Mr. Peabody and Sherman

The 2016 film Mr. Peabody and Sherman even features King Tut. The young heroine Penny seems smitten with the boy king and agrees to marry him, and nothing Peabody and Sherman say can dissuade her. The only thing that changes her mind is when Tut’s advisor tells her that when the king dies, she also must die. I spent a lot of time at the museum after this movie came out, ensuring kids that in real life back then, the queen was not put to death when the king died. I eventually watched the movie myself, and inaccuracies aside, I recommend it for some good laughs. It’s just another part of the Tut phenomenon.

It is simply Tut’s tomb that made him so famous to us. It contained so much gold and bling and riches, so many mysterious and fascinating objects, that even from 1922 it made Tut a household name. A great deal of mystique and mystery have been attached to Tut because of KV62, because until that point in time, every royal tomb that had been excavated, had already been picked clean by raiders millennia ago. Just imagine what might have been inside the tombs of kings like Tuthmosis III, Amunhotep III, and Ramesses II.

A great deal of nonsense has also been attached to King Tut and his tomb. One of the greatest misconceptions is the curse of King Tut, which is more Hollywood than reality. Some of it was caused by the misinterpretation of inscribed artifacts within the tomb, but there simply is no curse inscribed in that tomb.

Back in 2006, when we had the exhibit at the Field Museum, I remember sitting at home one evening and watching a local news affiliate talk about the exhibit. One of the most beautiful objects on display was one of four gold coffinettes that used to hold Tut’s preserved organs:

Gold coffinette of Tutankhamun.

The news anchor showed an image of the coffinette and there was a closeup of hieroglyphs that one could see inside it. The anchor proceeded to explain that those hieroglyphs were a written curse. I very nearly screamed at my TV. Or maybe I did scream. The inscription was not a curse but a ritual prayer. This is a good example of how the modern media tends to distort the facts.

There are all sorts of wild, half-baked fringe ideas about Tut. One of the most popular is that Akhenaten and King Tut were aliens, mostly because the artwork of that period shows their bodies in distorted styles. One of the amuletic devices found on Tut’s mummy was a meteoric dagger, and because meteors come from space, this only encourages some in the fringe to build on the alien scheme.

But as the pages of my humble blog reveal, the fringe has attached itself to ancient Egypt and has no shortage of ways to distort and misrepresent this ancient culture.

As I write this article, there is a new exhibit in the works for Los Angeles: King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh. It opens March 2018. As far as I have been able to determine, Los Angeles is the only venue. This exhibit is in preparation for the installation of Tut’s treasures in the new museum Egypt has been building at Giza, which will be opening in the near future (or so they say). Once Tut’s treasures are in place at Giza in the new museum, they might not travel ever again. But we’ve all heard that before.

There is much we still don’t know about King Tut. How he died remains one of the greatest questions today. His mummy has been poked and prodded and studied more than any ancient body from history, literally right down to his DNA, but there is still no universal agreement on cause of death. There is still much we don’t know about the Amarna Period, the time period in Dynasty 18 when Tut lived, mainly due to the later kings so industriously wiping away Akhenaten and Amarna history. We still can’t be absolutely certain of the order of succession between Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. Many questions remain, and that only adds to the mystique.

Tutankhamun is both enigma and rock star. He is one of history’s greatest icons. He will continue to enthrall everyday people, and I will continue to talk about him and answer questions at the museum. I don’t mind in the least. Tut is not one of my own “favorite” pharaohs, but his Amarna Period is endlessly fascinating to study. The romance of King Tut just never seems to get old in popular culture.

Now we’ll take the opportunity to examine hieroglyphs more closely: their categories, their phonetic functions, their orientations in context, and some examples of inscriptions.

Classifications of hieroglyphs

As a rule hieroglyphs can be classified into three broad categories: logograms, phonograms, and determinatives.

Logograms: Glyphs representing specific words.

Phonograms: Glyphs representing specific sounds.

Determinatives: Glyphs used for classifying words.

What complicates things is that certain glyphs might move from one of these categories to another, depending on how they’re used. The student must train himself not to focus on a specific hieroglyph in an inscription but on groupings of glyphs, just as when we read English we don’t search out specific letters but rather recognize whole words.

The number of hieroglyphs fluctuated from period to period and averaged around 800, and there was always the potential for odd variations of particular glyphs. But in general individual glyphs in the above categories can be broken down into three more categories: monoliterals, biliterals, and triliterals. Their names are self-suggestive. A monoliteral is a glyph that represents only a single sound, a biliteral two sounds, and a triliteral three sounds. Here is a chart showing the most common repertoire of monoliterals:

Monoliterals

In each case the first column shows the glyph, the second its transliteration symbol, and the third the common way most of these glyphs are pronounced in English and other modern languages (which in all cases does not necessarily represent the potential ancient pronunciations).

A note on transliteration: This is a system employing basic characters from the Western alphabets to represent the sounds or sound approximations of the ancient pronunciations. When typing something like this blog, in which font selections are limited and one doesn’t have access to the full range of transliteration characters, there is a simplified system called Manuel de Codage (see here). Henceforth this simplified system is what I’ll be using, when needed.

In my chart above, the last two glyphs at bottom-right represent a convention developed by the ancient scribes to represent certain sounds that were not part of the ancient Egyptian language. The recumbent lion, then, was often used to represent the “L’ sound (and in some cases so was the mouth glyph), while the lasso stood for a long “O.” Examples are seen in the Greek names Ptolemy and Cleopatra. You can see by the transliterations of these two glyphs that in both cases, when used in regular Egyptian words, they’re actually biliterals.

There are not many monoliterals and they weren’t used often to write out names or words in native Egyptian. In native writing they served other purposes, such as denoting phonetic complements (more on that later) and, as seen, the phonetic spellings of foreign names. Far more common in the hieroglyphic repertoire were biliterals and triliterals, a small sampling of which can be seen here:

Examples of biliterals and triliterals

Biliterals and triliterals formed the brunt of spellings. Another category of hieroglyphs is the determinative, which served a useful purpose. Ancient Egyptian was a language containing a small vocabulary (by English standards, at least) and a lot of homonyms. The context of a word in a sentence would help to clarify its meaning, but in many cases a “sense sign” or determinative was added to the end to clarify it further. A good example is the ancient Egyptian sS (“sesh”):

The determinative in practice

At top is a scribal kit: a reed stylus, cord with water pot, and palette with ink wells. Behind the kit is a squatting man, which in this case is the determinative. The kit tells use the word “sesh” while the man clarifies the word denotes a person, in this case a scribe. At bottom is the scribal kit again, so once more we have “sesh.” But here at the end is a papyrus roll tied closed, a determinative which tells us the word is something to do with the writing arts: “document” or “to write.” As sense signs determinatives are not read aloud; they are merely literary aids. If you haven’t already guessed it, sS is a biliteral.

There is a rich collection of determinatives, and again, a glyph used as a determinative in one case might mean something else if used another way (the squatting man above, for example, might elsewhere be used as a noun for man or person or even as a pronoun).

Where are the vowels?

You might have noticed something about the columns of transliterations in the above charts: the absence of vowels. The fact is, we have a poor understanding of vowels in the ancient language. Pure vowels do not appear in the hieroglyphic repertoire. You see weak consonants that might act like vowels in some cases, such as our own letter “Y,” but in practice vowels weren’t written. As with other Semitic languages like the original Hebrew and Arabic, the consonants were the important thing. The speaker would use skeletal groupings of consonants and plug in vowels to produce words. Much the same is true for writing: a literate person would see groupings of consonants and automatically know how the vowels would work.

This means we cannot know exactly how a lot of the ancient vocabulary sounded when spoken. As a convention in modern linguistics we tend to add a schwa (a mid-central vowel sound, like a neutral “E”) to help flesh out words so we can speak them. You see this in my own example of sS (“sesh”). The same is true for names and other proper nouns. Linguists have been a bit freer with adding vowel sounds to names just so they sound more natural when we speak them. This is why you might find King Tut’s name spelled as Tutankhamun, Tutankhamen, and even Tutankhamon. In truth all we have preserved in the pronunciation of that name is transliterated as twt-anx-imn.

Phonetic complements & transposition

Earlier I mentioned phonetic complements. This is a somewhat fussy aspect of hieroglyphic writing but it’s useful to point out and easy to understand. In some cases hieroglyphs might have different sound values or meanings from one use to the next—it is again context that will often point this out. But phonetic complements help to remind the reader of the final sounds of a glyph, which in turn help to remind one of the glyph’s meaning. A biliteral will often carry one phonetic complement at the end of the glyph to represent its final sound, and a triliteral its two final sounds.

Phonetic complements

At left is a biliteral bird glyph denoting the sound value wr; the mouth glyph at the bottom denotes that the final sound is an “R.” Next is the familiar glyph of the ankh, a triliteral (anx) followed by its complements “N” and “KH” (a kind of guttural sound).

There are other rules to muddy the waters, including honorific transposition. This is where a grouping of glyphs is purposely out of order because a glyph denoting something of importance (a king, a god) is placed first even if not spoken first.

Honorific transposition

At left is a flag or banner and a club. The flag is a triliteral (nTr) often used to denote a god, goddess, or divinity in general. The club in this case is the biliteral Hm, meaning “servant.” You would speak the term as Hm-nTr (“servant of the god,” that is, “priest”) but in writing the banner is first due to its importance. Similarly, in the second example is a plant glyph at top representing the tiliteral nswt (“king”) with its phonetic complements. Below is a duck denoting the biliteral sA (“son”). You would speak the term as sA-nswt (“son of the king”) but in writing the glyph for “king” comes first because of its importance.

One also frequently sees honorific transposition within personal names and proper nouns. Here are the glyphs composing the name of King Tut:

A cartouche-shaped chest from the tomb of King Tut

I’ve color-coded it to make it simpler to follow. We know the name as Tutankhamun (“Living image of Amun”), but it’s written differently. In the green box is the name imn (“Amun”), the great god of Thebes who was the focus of royal cult and worship for most of the New Kingdom. In the red box are the glyphs spelling twt (“image”), and in the blue box the glyph anx (“living”). So although the name is said “Tutankhamun,” when written it gives most importance to the deity Amun. (The three glyphs at bottom say “Ruler of Southern Heliopolis” [i.e., Thebes], a common epithet for Tutankhamun.)

If that’s not enough, there is also graphical transposition. This is where glyphs are purposely out of order simply because graphically or aesthetically, they look better that way in an inscription. In both honorific and graphical transposition, it’s just a matter of knowing the vocabulary and the glyphs to understand how to make sense of them.

Orientation of glyphs

Even if you can’t read or translate hieroglyphs, there is almost always an easy way to tell in which direction glyphs are to be read: just look at the direction they are facing. See this chart:

Orientation of glyphs

Generally look for hieroglyphs that represent living things or even parts of living things. Starting at far right (note the little arrows), the plant glyph is pointing off to the right. Next, the bird glyph looks to the right. Behind the bird, the open hand faces the right. Farther in, both the eyeball and squatting figure favor the right. Behind them, the bent arm with hand faces the right. This means you read the inscription from right to left. When one glyph is above another, you always read the top glyph first.

One of the fun things about hieroglyphs is how they can be multidirectional, even on the same monument. The direction the glyphs face will clue you in. Most horizontal inscriptions are right to left in ancient Egyptian, as in the above example, but you will see left to right, too. Plenty of inscriptions are vertical, which means you always read top to bottom (never bottom up); in a vertical inscription, the direction of the glyphs will tell you whether you’re reading right to left or left to right, top to bottom. I’ve heard tell of a single ancient inscription that was deliberately written bottom up, but I’ve never seen it and am left to wonder if it’s a modern myth.

Many inscriptions and texts include not only hieroglyphs but figural art. There is often a common-sense approach to reading the direction of these, too.

Here is the final scene in the Book of the Dead of the temple chantress Isty (probably Dynasty 21), from the Field Museum. At left is a shrine in which you see the enthroned god Osiris and his sister-wife, the great goddess Isis. They look off to the right. Note that the hieroglyphs immediately in front of them all face to the right, telling us that part of the text reads right to left—it faces the two deities and reads into them, telling us that the inscription concerns them (and in fact the start of the text tells us Osiris is speaking). Meanwhile, the lady Isty looks to the left, into the shrine. Her glyphs just to the right of the shrine face to the left, so they are to be read left to right. This part of the text concerns Isty herself. So when glyphs accompany figural art, there is often an order and a relationship between the two. Hieroglyphs and figural art were generally a unit.

The offering formula

Many inscriptions and texts you’ll see at museums are funerary in nature, and many of those writings will contain some version of an offering formula. This was a “spell” to ensure the deceased would always have food, drink, and provisions in the afterlife. To the ancient Egyptians the sacred traditional nature of hieroglyphs meant they weren’t just simple writing but were powerful, functional invocations. To show it, write it, and speak it was to make it happen. I tend to refer to it myself as “functional magic.” No two offering formulae might be the same, but they all served the same purpose. Here is one I transcribed from a stela at the Field Museum:

Offering formula

I’ve segmented it into blocks so that we can break it down into logical bite-sized chunks. First you’ll notice by the direction of the glyphs that this is read right to left. You’ve probably already noticed how the glyphs in such texts are arranged in neat squares and rectangles where possible. We call these arrangements cadrats, which was simply for the economy of space. Let’s look at the numbered segments.

Block 1 is the tell-tale start of an offering formula. It might appear somewhat differently in different offering formulae, and might or might not contain phonetic complements where appropriate, but the plant, triangle, and reed tray are a giveaway: “An offering which the king gives.” The plant represents “king,” the triangle (a bread mold) the verb “to give,” and the reed tray “an offering.” The glyphs are out of order due to honorific transposition, but when seeing this arrangement you’ll always think of “An offering which the king gives.”

Block 2 is a very typical spelling for the name of the god Osiris (eye ball, throne, and squatting god). Block 3 uses the basket (half-circle) to denote the word “lord” and behind it the name of the city Djedu, one of the chief cult centers for the god Osiris. Block 4 is the epithet “the great god,” and Block 5 again starts with the “lord” basket and then the name of the ancient site of Abydos, Osiris’ chief cult center.

Block 6 then starts the action Osiris is performing on behalf of the person for whom the formula was written. The outstretched arm with bread loaf is another way to say “to may give,” and the serpent below it is actually a suffix male pronoun (thus, together, “that he give”). Block 7 begins the listing of what the deceased will receive; in this case, the rectangular house plan with descending paddle says “a voice offering” or “invocation” of “bread” (the bottom right-most glyph) and “beer” (the bottom left-most glyph). Then, in Block 8, the offerings continue with self-descriptive glyphs: oxen and fowl. The cylindrical glyph is a cake, and some read this while others view it as a determinative and do not read it. The three slashes below the cake is one of the conventions for expressing plurality. Block 9 is seen in many offering formulae and adds “linen and alabaster” to the offerings.

Block 10 is a common arrangement with two prepositions and the glyph of upraised arms denoting the part of the soul called the kA. The water ripple representing an “N” sound was often used as a preposition of one form or another, and altogether the block says “for the soul of.”

Block 11 is the title of the man for whom this formula was written. The personified pot from which liquid pours refers to the man literally as “pure one,” which we typically render as “priest.” Here the three water ripples are determinatives for the water pot, and not prepositions (the water ripple served numerous purposes in the ancient writing).

In Block 12 we come to the man’s name. The biliteral game board with its phonetic complement give us mn, and the pair of reed leaves a y. This renders the name Meny, a fairly common one in ancient Egypt. The squatting man at the end is a determinative, which can be one way to help recognize a name in an inscription.

The final two blocks are epithets of Meny, kind of like titles. Block 13 is the phrase mAa-xrw (“maa-kheru”), which literally means “true of voice” but is usually rendered as “the justified.” It usually denotes (although not exclusively) that the person has died and has reached the afterlife safely. And finally, Block 14 is the phrase “possessor of reverence.”

In total, then, the offering formula reads as follows: “An offering which the king gives to Osiris, Lord of Djedu, the great god, Lord of Anydos; that he may give a voice offering of bread and beer, oxen and fowl, alabaster and linen, to the soul of the priest Meny, the justified, possessor or reverence.”

Some concluding notes on grammar

Again, it’s not the purpose of this article to teach you hieroglyphs. A blog can’t do that. I just want to give you a general idea how glyphs work. Ancient Egyptian was a very different language from English or most any modern Western language. For one thing, while English is an SVO language (favoring an order of subject, verb, then object), ancient Egyptian was VSO (verb, subject, then object). Ancient Egyptian generally lacked the linking verb “to be” but contained a rich and complex arrangement of adverbial and prepositional phrases of the sorts not quite seen in English.

Pronouns were also somewhat complex. Some were independent and stood alone much like our pronouns do, while others stood as suffixes at the ends of words. Words did have genders as with German and other European languages, and as with French, adjectives followed the nouns they modified. There was only a limited use of articles, and usually more so in the later stages of the language.

Perhaps all of this gives you a sense of challenges one might face when conducting translations. In many cases it can be straight forward, but in many others, due to the very different syntax and grammar, it can be tricky. This is why one translator might come up with something different from another translator, although if they both did their work sufficiently, the overall meaning of the translations should meld with each other.

In the final installment of the article, we’ll look at actual examples of inscriptions and translate them. Until then, thanks for reading.

The grandest period of ancient Egypt was Dynasty 18 (1549-1298 BCE). This was early in the New Kingdom, the period of empire for the Egyptians. A number of powerful empires were rising in the Near East at this time, but Egypt was one of the most formidable. Under the long reign of the warrior-pharaoh Tuthmosis III (1479-1424 BCE), Egypt ruled everything and everyone from deep in Nubia to northern Syria. Although famous and powerful pharaohs would emerge after this dynasty (Seti I, Ramesses II, Ramesses III), Egypt would never again be as far-reaching and influential as it was in its heyday of Dynasty 18.

Dynasty 18 is also one of the best-attested periods of pharaonic history. We have a rather solid understanding of and ample attestation for its pharaohs, their queens, their progeny, the nobility, and many of the events that occurred in the period. But this is not the case for a rather short stretch of time late in Dynasty 18 that today we refer to as the Amarna Period.

The Amarna Period is so named after a site in Middle Egypt called Tell el Amarna. It centers around the life and times of one of Egypt’s most mysterious, memorable, and puzzling pharaohs: Akhenaten (1359-1342 BCE). This king reigned for only seventeen years, yet he left an indelible impression on the overall history of ancient Egypt.

The irony is, this enigmatic period—often called the Amarna Interlude in Egyptology—was meant to have been forgotten. It represented a time of social, religious, administrative, and diplomatic upheaval in ancient Egypt, all at the hands of Akhenaten. Many people today are familiar with this king, or at least with the basic peculiarities of his reign. But if the succeeding kings of the New Kingdom had had their way, we would know nothing at all about it. That’s another irony: a number of kings who were erased from the history in ancient times—Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun—are some of the most popular among modern devotees of ancient Egypt.

To this day the Amarna Period is heatedly debated among professional and amateur historians alike. We joke of the Amarna tar pits: they will suck you in and suffocate you. A major part of the problem is that later kings, beginning with Horemheb at the end of Dynasty 18, enacted thorough erasures of the preceding history to try to hide it from their own descendants. They certainly did not destroy all evidence, of course, but they were quite successful in leaving to us a heavily fragmented record of this period.

We’re not even sure of the exact succession following Akhenaten. Did he reign at the end concurrently with his queen Nefertiti, or did she predecease him? Did Smnekhkare reign concurrently at the end, or did he die before Akhenaten? Was Smenkhkare the sole successor? How does the enigmatic figure of Neferneferuaten figure into the succession? Did Nefertiti reign as a coregent into the first years of the boy-king Tutankhamun? These are just some of the scenarios posited by Egyptologists. It’s simply not clear what happened after Akhenaten died. The historical record becomes clear again only once Tutankhamun was on the throne.

But this is not the subject of my article today. Rather I wish to explore why Akhenaten enacted his religious reforms and attempt to shed some light onto the bizarre characteristics of Amarna artwork, which is often misunderstood in modern times.

Amunhotep IV Comes to the Throne

Very little is known about Akhenaten prior to his ascendancy to the throne of Egypt. Prior to this, he is attested only once, on a jar sealing in the ruins of his father’s great palace at Malkata, in Western Thebes (Dodson & Hilton 2004: 146). Akhenaten was not originally in line for the throne, however. His father was the great pharaoh Amunhotep III (1388-1348 BCE), often referred to as Amunhotep the Magnificent. This was one of the wealthiest and most powerful kings of ancient Egypt, and universally revered by later kings. Amunhotep III was not a warrior-pharaoh because by his time there was no one left for the Egyptians to conquer: his predecessors (especially Tuthmosis I and Tuthmosis III) had already conquered everyone from Nubia through the Levant and established the Egyptian empire. Amunhotep III lived off their fat and was a prodigious builder, especially at the great temple complexes of the god Amun at Thebes and Luxor.

Eastern entrance to the Karnak temple complex.

Amunhotep III’s oldest son and crown prince was Tuthmose. He was supposed to have succeeded his father. But based on the dearth of monuments belonging to Tuthmose, it appears the crown prince died young. While his tomb has never been found, the mummy of a young boy discovered in 1898 in the side chamber of another king’s tomb might be the body of Tuthmose. While we can never know with certainty if it is his mummy, the mummification is consistent with the techniques of Dynasty 18. The body is that of a boy around eleven years of age.

Prince Tuthmose? The mummy of a young boy probably from Dynasty 18.

The death of the crown prince elevated a younger son to direct line to the throne. This son was born as Amunhotep (IV). He would later change his own name to Akhenaten, but more on that later. It’s interesting to speculate what might have happened had Tuthmose not died young. We would never have had the Amarna Period, nor would there ever have been a king named Tutankhamun. While the ancient Egyptians themselves might have preferred that scenario, most of us who study ancient Egypt today quite favor the way things worked out.

If the poorly preserved mummy of Amunhotep III can tell us anything, it’s that he was probably in ill health and in a lot of pain in the last years of his long life. This includes rather terrible dentition as well as a severe abscess that might in fact have contributed to (or caused) his death.

The mummy of Amunhotep III.

But Amunhotep III himself might have been one of the primary causes for the upheavals his son Akhenaten would go on to cause. Amunhotep favored a deity known as the Aten, which in essence was the visible sun disk in the sky. As such the Aten was a minor aspect of the great sun god Re. The Aten long precedes Amunhotep III in the pantheon of Egyptian deities, but was first elevated by Amunhotep. This king called himself the “Dazzling Sun Disk” (Redford 1999: 50), a reference to the Aten. He called his vast palace complex in Western Thebes “Splendor of the Aten” (today it’s known as Malkata or Malqata) and named one of his royal boats “The Aten Sparkles.”

Many historians have speculated that young Amunhotep IV (Akhenaten) was trained by priests of the Heliopolis temple complex (Foster 1999: 90). This was the primary cult setting for the ancient god Re, the primary sun god. Taken together with Amunhotep III’s preferences for the solar aspect called the Aten, it’s probably no wonder that Akhenaten fell under the same influences. The difference is, Amunhotep III seems to have venerated the Aten on a personal level and did not try to force this god onto the people; the main state deity was still Amun, or Amun-Re, and the temple complexes of Thebes and Luxor remained the most important sites of veneration in Egypt. At this time in Dynasty 18, Thebes was the religious capital of the state (the administrative capital was in the northern ancient city of Memphis).

Akhenaten, on the other hand, would go to extremes. He would engineer sweeping religious reforms that would unseat Amun and proscribe his entire cult. The great temples at Thebes and Luxor would be closed. Akhenaten would erect a new, purpose-built city for the Aten, and would shut himself up in its precincts for the rest of his life.

Why?

This is a question with which Egyptologists wrestle to this day. Akhenaten’s motivations are not entirely clear. It could involve any number of scenarios. Let’s explore three of them.

1. Religious Zealot

A common theory is a pretty straight-forward one. Akhenaten was a religious zealot. His devotion to the Aten was such that there remained no room for other deities, even though Egypt had been polytheistic for millennia. So fanatical was Akhenaten’s devotion that he closed the temples to Amun, proscribed the veneration of most other deities unrelated to the solar cult, and even abandoned the ancient cult of Osiris, who offered most anyone the promise of eternal afterlife. To this day we don’t have a good understanding of what Akhenaten himself believed of the afterlife, but it’s clear Osiris didn’t fit into it. While some aspects of burial rites remained intact, such as a royal tomb and a lot of the equipment that went into it, many of the traditional icons were abandoned. For example, here is a corner fragment of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus:

A corner of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus showing Nefertiti in a protective posture.

In traditional polytheistic times each corner of an elite stone sarcophagus featured one of four goddesses (Isis, Nephthys, Selket, and Neith) with wings outspread in a protective posture. On Akhenaten’s sarcophagus, all four of the traditional goddesses was replaced by one female figure: that of Akhenaten’s great wife, the chief queen Nefertiti.

It is commonly stated that Akhenaten was the world’s first monotheist. This is not how his reign began, however. One might classify him more as a henotheist, where one deity is favored above all others but the existence of other deities is not denied. From the start the Aten was closely identified with the great deity Re-Horakhty, a union of the very old gods Re and Horus. In one depiction Akhenaten is shown in the presence of Maat, the traditional goddess personifying truth, balance, and order.

But it is certain that soon into his reign, Akhenaten proscribed veneration of other deities, most especially Amun. In a practical sense there could be only one state deity, so Akhenaten tossed out Amun in favor of the Aten. It was the Aten who henceforth was to receive attention. It seems clear Akhenaten at first tried to establish the Aten side by side with Amun because he erected large temple precincts at Thebes, the traditional home and cult center of Amun. But it did not last. At some point after year five or six of his reign, Akhenaten closed the temples dedicated to Amun. All of the natural and economic resources formerly focused on Amun were switched to the Aten. The powerful priests of Amun were out of a job.

As the years of Akhenaten’s reign progressed, he became increasingly monotheistic. He was no longer shown in the presence of other deities. Only the Aten was featured in royal art and monuments. And in contrast to the traditional deities of generations past, the Aten was not depicted in animal or anthropomorphic form: it was simply a radiant sun disk with arms reaching down like rays, hands clutching ankh symbols, to bestow life onto Akhenaten and his family.

The Aten as a sun disk streaming down rays to the faces of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Note the hands and ankh symbols at the bottoms of the rays.

The Aten was even provided a royal titulary inscribed inside cartouches, in the manner of a king. Changes in this titulary enable historians to track the approximate date when a monument was commissioned.

One of history’s great poems comes from the Amarna Period. Called “Great Hymn to the Aten,” it was found in the Amarna tomb of the nobleman Aye (who some years down the road would end up becoming king after the death of Tutankhamun) (Foster 1999: 99). This long poem is often attributed in modern times to Akhenaten himself. While there is no evidence to demonstrate this, it is revealing of Akhenaten’s belief system and how he himself viewed the status of the Aten. Written as though Akhenaten is speaking the lines, a certain stanza in particular stands out (Pritchard 1958: 227-230):

How manifold it is, what thou hast made!
They are hidden from the face (of man).
O sole god, like whom there is no other!…

Akhenaten probably did emerge into monotheism. The Aten was the “sole god.” That Akhenaten viewed himself as divine and in commune with the Aten is evident in another stanza (ibid):

Thou are in my heart,
And there is no other that knows thee
Save thy son Nefer-kheperu-Re Wa-en-Re [Akhenaten]…

This extended to Neferiti, his queen, who together were alone the intermediaries between the Aten and mankind. This was obviously problematic for the religion of the Aten, which today is often called Atenism, but we’ll come back to that.

There is also the name change. Around the fifth years of his reign, the man originally born as Amunhotep (IV) changed his name to Akhenaten, “Servant of the Aten.” So proscribed was the god Amun now that Akhenaten sent his agents to carve out the name of Amun wherever it could be found. This includes the theophoric personal names containing the element of Amun. This is one way a lot of monuments dating to the Amarna Period and before can be dated to that period: “Amun” is carved out of them. And remember the name of Akhenaten’s father: Amunhotep III. As odd as it seems, the name of this king was no different. The “Amun” element was carved away. Only instances of his throne name, Nebmaatre, were left intact.

With this summary it might seem Akhenaten was a zealot or fanatic, but there two more possibilities to explore. But before moving on, let’s clarify a modern misconception. In reading about Akhenaten you will often come across statements that he was a philosopher, a man before his time, and a man of peace and harmony. He may have been something of a philosopher, and perhaps even a man before his time (which smacks of bias toward Judeo-Christianity, given the monotheism angle), but we ought to dismiss notions of a peace-loving dove. Proscribing a long-standing cult to an ancient god, ending the veneration of other deities, and forcing upon the population a new form of religion would simply not have been a peaceful process. In all likelihood Akhenaten would’ve needed his military to make it happen. This is my own speculation, mind you, but the reforms could not have been peaceful.

On the subject of Judeo-Christian bias, this has manifested itself among modern fringe circles in a rather unusual way. Some modern folks favoring alternative history have tried to identify Akhenaten with Moses. I think it goes without saying that we need not take this seriously.

2. Acting Against the Amun Priesthood

Another theory also holds weight. Even before the time of Amunhotep III and Akhenaten, the priesthood controlling the cult of Amun had become very powerful. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that some of the high priests of Amun rivaled Pharaoh in wealth and power. Kings were obligated to bestow land and other gifts onto the cult of Amun—tax free. The temple complex of Amun ended up controlling significant portions of the arable land of the Nile Valley, and from this came great amounts of wealth.

Obviously this did not sit well with many kings. The ideology and concept of kinghood is one thing, reality is quite another. Not all kings were adept at exercising and maintaining power, and a weak king was the tool of powerful priesthoods. Whether this bothered Amunhotep III is not really clear, because while he began the elevation of the Aten, he also supported and expanded the cult of Amun. Perhaps Akhenaten wasn’t so forgiving.

And perhaps his closing of the Amun temples was a direct reflection of that. There was not enough room for two state deities, and as I said earlier, Amun was now proscribed while all attention and resources were switched to the Aten. This might also explain the establishing of a brand-new capital city at a brand-new site (see below), where Akhenaten built not only new palaces and residences for his followers, but a couple of brand-new temples for the Aten.

So perhaps Akhenaten obliterated the cult of Amun as a way to restore unrivaled power to the throne—his throne. Establishing a new cult for a once-minor solar deity would be an effective way to do it. The priests of Amun no longer threatened royal authority.

3. Plague

A more modern theory involves epidemic. Most scholars agree that a plague had struck Egypt in the reign of Amunhotep III. It is thought to have spread into Egypt from Canaan. A telling sign of this is that Amunhotep III erected a great many colossal statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.

Sekhmet, goddess of war and disease.

As with other deities, Sekhmet had numerous job descriptions. She was a goddess of war, a favorite past time of pharaohs. But if you recall, Amunhotep III was not a warrior-pharaoh. Everyone had already been conquered by the time he came to the throne. Why build so many Sekhmet statues, then? Another role of this goddess was pestilence and disease. She was a fearsome goddess and punisher of mankind if not appeased, so it is thought Amunhotep commissioned so many statues of her to appease the goddess and motivate her to stop the plague.

It didn’t work. The plague likely continued into the reign of Akhenaten. He had sired six daughters and it seems plausible that two or more died from the plague.

People must have been desperate. Akhenaten and Nefertiti must have felt the same. The land was unclean, and the old gods were doing nothing to save the people. Therefore, why not elevate a new deity who might be more beneficial to Egypt? This was the Aten’s big break.

But elevating a new god would not have been enough. If the very land itself was unclean, it was best to leave. In year five of his reign Akhenaten commissioned the building of a new capital city at a site in the middle of the Nile Valley that had been used for nothing before. It was virgin territory, and therefore clean. Akhenaten built his new city and called it Akhetaten, “Horizon of the Aten.”

To expedite the building process of new palaces, temples, and private residences, Akhenaten’s engineers devised a new form of building block known today as the talatat:

Talatats, the principal building stone of Akhenaten’s city.

The talatat is a small stone block that allowed for the quicker building of monuments, big and small. As the photo shows, they sufficed for relief carvings and inscriptional material, as well. On average the reliefs and inscriptions of the Amarna Period are not of the refined caliber of the works of many other pharaohs, but what mattered was speed. And the city of Akhetaten went up fast.

That Akhenaten had a defined idea for the shape and function of the purpose-built city seems clear. Throughout the area he commissioned sixteen known boundary stelae of enormous size and fully inscribed them.

A boundary stela of the city of Akhetaten.

These stelae explained the size of the new city, and although often fragmentary today, their texts are illuminating. One reads in part (Kemp 2012: 34):

I shall make Akhetaten for the Aten, my farther, in this place. I shall not make Akhetaten for him to the south of it, to the north of it, to the west of it, to the east of it. I shall not expand beyond the southern stela of Akhetaten toward the south, nor shall I expand beyond the northern stela of Akhetaten toward the north…

I shall make the ‘House of the Aten’ for the Aten, my father, in Akhetaten in this place. I shall make the ‘Mansion of the Aten’ for the Aten , my father, in Akhetaten in this place…

From the start, then, the new city had fixed boundaries and purposes. The “House of the Aten” and “Mansion of the Aten” describe two different temples erected for the veneration of Akhenaten’s deity. Along with the palaces and logistical infrastructure, everything Akhenaten needed was there in his new city. And he does not seem to have left the city after he moved there in year five or six.

Artist’s concept of the city of Akhetaten, showing the Great Temple to the Aten, the city’s principal temple.

One can see the plausibility of the plague theory. Akhenaten elevates the Aten to supremacy and abandons the old gods. He moves 20,000 people to a new purpose-built city well away from the diseased old cities. He walls himself up in Akhetaten and avoids all other places.

Of course, these acts can also describe a religious zealot. As far as that goes, they can also fit the scenario of abolishing old cults to elevate a new one. This is why the debate continues. There is no clear explanation for why Akhenaten enacted such sweeping and upsetting reforms. It could well be a combination of all three scenarios, or for a reason we don’t even know.

The Style of Amarna Period Art

Another enduring mystery of the Amarna Period is its unusual art forms. In more traditional times kings were usually depicted as uniformly muscular, buff, handsome—the perfect male figure, in other words. Not so in the Amarna Period. Akhenaten sponsored a completely new artistic form that upset tradition and revised the human appearance. Amarna Period artwork is immediately recognizable:

Statue of Akhenaten.

Amarna Period stela of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their daughters.

Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti, as well as their progeny, are shown in androgynous form. Without cartouches and names in accompanying inscriptions it can be difficult to distinguish male from female figures. Both possess long faces with full lips, elongated torsos with breasts, wide hips, and spindly limbs. It’s not difficult to imagine how confused the earliest archaeologists were when they first excavated at Amarna and came across these monuments. I once read that the earliest archaeologists, in fact, had thought this king named Akhenaten was a woman. He certainly resembled one.

But one must take care in interpreting pharaonic artwork, regardless of the period of time from which it comes. This artwork is usually not portraiture as we understand the concept. A good example is the long-lived Ramesses II, who died at around ninety years of age (1212 BCE) but whose statues always show him as young, handsome, and virile.

Down through time historians and other specialists have had a hard time understanding the human forms of Amarna artwork. They just look “wrong,” somehow. From this have come a myriad of attempts at medical explanations, Marfan syndrome being one of the most common. The physical characteristics of Amarna artwork do seem to fit with some aspects of Marfan. But as modern scientific analyses of royal Amarna mummies have confirmed, there is no evidence in the physical human remains for such a disorder (Rühli & Ikram 2013: 7; Hawass et al 2010: 637).

It’s unrealistic in the first place that both Akhenaten and Nefertiti would’ve had such a disorder. Unlike many pharaohs of Dynasty 18 who married sisters or half-sisters, Nefertiti was not a sister of Akhenaten. There’s no certain evidence she’s of royal blood, period, but the debate continues. Her parentage is simply unclear to us. I must state that there is no universal agreement on whether the mummies of these two royals have ever been found. Hawass is virtually alone in identifying an unnamed mummy from a tomb designated KV55 as Akhenaten (ibid), whereas most specialists agree this is the body of a man too young at death to have been Akhenaten and is more than likely the mummy of a short-lived king named Smenkhkare; a plausible mummy for Nefertiti is even less likely.

The point is, there is no evidence in the extant Amarna mummies for a disorder like Marfan, so that as well as other pathology is unlikely to be the explanation for the odd human form in Amarna artwork.

So, how else to explain it? We might never know for certain, but it might well involve the nature of Akhenaten’s sweeping religious reforms. Many believe the art can be explained as a religious convention to stress the physical androgyny of a creator deity. As with the Aten, sex is not required to create. Therefore, Akhenaten and Nefertiti reflect this in their forms, as do their daughters. By extension, based on traditions of old wherein private people followed royal convention, the same human forms are seen in the depictions of nobility in Amarna. This makes a medical explanation like Marfan even less likely.

It’s telling that all of the prominent creator deities of traditional pharaonic Egypt were male, so this stands at odds with the above scenario. Then again, the Aten was neither male nor female in nature, so I don’t know how far that argument can be carried. Still, others have posited that the odd human form is nothing more than a more natural and free-flowing preference fostered by Akhenaten (Silverman et al 2006: 17). This must be considered, too.

Some have also posited that the elongated heads of Amarna artwork suggest head-binding. This practice has been done in certain areas of Africa, as well as of course Mesoamerica. However, the sum total of analyses of human remains show that skull deformation was not practiced in ancient Egypt (Filer 1995: 91). Besides, focusing just on the odd heads ignores the equally odd characteristics of other body parts.

Then of course there is fringe crowd who like to express that the heads look that way because Akhenaten and clan were aliens. This might be suitable fodder for a nitwit setting like the TV show Ancient Aliens, but it is not to be taken seriously.

Why Akhenaten and Atenism Failed

The religion of the Aten was more or less doomed to fail. For one thing, even if he was a king, Akhenaten forced his beliefs onto a people who had held to polytheistic beliefs long before the Amarna Period. The entire episode must have seemed bizarre to them, and upsetting. For another, it never took hold in Akhenaten’s own time, anyway. Other, smaller temples to the Aten were erected in other cities up and down the Nile Valley, but cults to old deities never completely disappeared. Even under Akhenaten’s nose in his city of Akhetaten, excavations of private residences in modern times have shown that household deities like Bes and Tawaret were still present.

Equally significant is how Akhenaten presented the concept of the Aten to the population. Recall the line from the “Great Hymn to the Aten” in which Akhenaten states that only he “knows” the Aten. In essence, the common people themselves were not permitted to pray directly to the Aten. This was never the case with the old traditional deities. People may rarely have been allowed inside the great state temples, but the gods venerated in those temples could still be worshipped privately in one’s home or in humble village shrines. In the reign of Akhenaten, on the other hand, it seems that people were expected to send their prayers to Aten by praying not to it but to Akhenaten and Nefertiti—they and only they would then send those prayers onto the deity. It was a rather impersonal religion to the vast majority of the population, in other words.

I use a modern comparison when I explain the gist of this. Imagine being a Roman Catholic with a crucifix of Christ on your bedroom wall. Along comes a new Pope who completely upsets and revises tradition: henceforth you are to worship the crucifix absent the figure of Christ, but you must also pray only to the Pope in order for your prayers to be sent on to the crucifix. Of course this sounds bizarre, and I admit the comparison is somewhat clumsy, but it helps one to image how ancient Egyptians must have felt when Akhenaten came to power.

Akhenaten died around 1342 BCE. An odd fact is, as unpopular as this king must have been, there is no evidence he was assassinated. It would certainly help to have a definitive mummy for the king, but it is what it is. In any case, the religion of the Aten died almost as quickly.

As I mentioned earlier, the exact succession of rulers following Akhenaten remains unclear and is hotly debated to this day. The historical record becomes clear again only when the boy-king Tutankhamun came to the throne in 1343 BCE. He was only around eight years old, so he exercised no real power. The true power behind the throne were government officials such as Aye, Horemheb, and Nakhtmin. They used Tut as a convenient tool to restore orthodoxy in short order.

The purpose-built city of Akhetaten was abandoned fairly quickly. It’s evident that people lived there for some time afterward, and estates for the Aten continued (such as for the production of wine). But the city itself lost all significance, and by the reign of Horemheb (1328-1298 BCE) at the end of Dynasty 18, Akhetaten’s talalate buildings were being razed and used as fill for other royal constructions. Today Akhetaten (modern Amarna) is a lifeless desert landscape with mostly only foundations of buildings remaining:

A modern aerial view of Tell el Amarna.

The religion of the Aten fell equally into ruin. Without Akhenaten and Nefertiti as figureheads to sustain the religion, it had no life left. The Aten returned to its former status as a minor aspect of Re.

Akhenaten’s fate was worse. Branded a heretic, he was to be forgotten for the rest of time. His name was never again to be spoken aloud. He was to be referred to, if at all, as “the criminal of Akhetaten.” Akhenaten fell into the dust bins of history and was forgotten.

Until the advent of modern archaeology, a lot of which has focused on Tell el Amarna since the nineteenth century. That’s another irony. This king was supposed to have been forgotten for eternity, erased from history, but in modern times he is one of the favorites for research subjects in Egyptology. Probably only Tutankhamun has had more books written about him as far as pharaohs are concerned. Akhenaten is just as popular among us amateur historians, and is even well known among laypeople.

The mummies of the succeeding pharaohs must be spinning in their graves. Or tombs. Or glass display cases in the museums of Egypt today.

Thanks for joining me. I welcome comments and questions.

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Dodson, Aidan and Dyan Hilton. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. 2004.

Around the year 1343 BCE a young boy came to the throne of Egypt. He was the last male heir in a long and powerful line of kings we today call the Tuthmosids, but he was only around eight years old. He followed on the heels of almost twenty years of social upheaval at the hands of Akhenaten, a king uniformly reviled by the pharaohs who succeeded him. Akhenaten had tried to install something akin to a henotheism or even monotheism in a culture that had been solidly polytheistic for millennia. Given that this young king, a boy called Tutankhaten, was too young to exercise real power or leadership, his powerful advisors and officials found themselves in a very convenient situation: they could use the little king to restore tradition and bring back the enormous cult of the proscribed deity Amun. And that’s exactly what they did.

One of the first things these officials did was change the boy-king’s name to Tutankhamun, “Living Image of Amun,” to help establish the fact that Amun was back. They married him to an older half-sister named Ankhesenpaaten, whose name was changed to Ankhesenamun, “She Lives for Amun.” They moved the nation’s capital from Akhenaten’s purpose-built city of Akhetaten back to Waset, the traditional religious capital of pharaonic Egypt. It is better known today as Thebes. (The modern place name is Luxor.) The god Akhenaten had venerated and whom he had forced upon Egypt as the new state deity, the Aten, was not proscribed but instead was returned to its former status as a minor aspect of the great sun deity Re. As for Akhenaten himself, the old king was branded a heretic and his name was not to be mentioned again; henceforth he was to be called “the criminal of Akhetaten.” The city of Akhetaten itself swiftly waned and fell into ruin, most of its stone temples and monuments disassembled down to their foundations by later kings and used as fill within the walls of massive temple pylons in the vast temple complex of Amun.

So came the reign of Tutankhamun, the boy-king. In our modern world he is synonymous with ancient Egypt. Most everyone has heard of him. To most people Tutankhamun is the most famous pharaoh of that long-ago civilization. He was certainly not the only one to come to the throne as a child in ancient Egypt, but the average modern person is not likely to be as aware of other boy-kings such as Pepi II.

The irony is, Tutankhamun was a minor king. He was something of a footnote in the history of ancient Egypt. He was likely forgotten within several generations of his own lifetime. This is largely due to two facts: he reigned for only around a decade and died at about eighteen years of age, and he was, after all, from the royal line of the reviled “criminal of Akhetaten” and was subsequently erased from their own history. Tutankhamun does not appear on any of the ancient kings lists of that great civilization. He was meant to be forgotten. We are not certain exactly how Tutankhamun was related to Akhenaten: many if not most historians used to believe he was the son of the heretic, but recent genetic testing has thrown that into significant doubt. That’s perhaps another story, but the point is, he was from the line of the heretic, so his fate was to be damned to eternal obscurity.

Until, that is, Tutankhamun’s tomb was found in 1922. Designated KV62 (Kings Valley Tomb 62), it was the first royal tomb to be found almost intact. Not completely intact, mind you, because it had been raided at least twice, but great quantities of burial goods were found in KV62: almost 5,400 objects packed into a rather ignominious little tomb the size of the average modern garage. No royal tomb unearthed to that point in time had been anywhere near as spectacular.

This is what has made Tutankhamun—King Tut—so famous in our own time. KV62 is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history and the event made its discoverer, a rather surly Brit named Howard Carter, a household name. He and Tut are forever linked in the annals of Egyptology.

But why did Tutankhamun reign for only ten years? What felled this king at such a young age? This is a question that has persisted in archaeology and the wider scientific community since the day the mummy was first unwrapped. And it is what we’re going to explore here.

I should caution before proceeding that to this day there is no universal agreement on any single explanation for the cause of death of this young king. It continues to be debated. I’ll share my own belief, but it is only one of many. They range from scientifically astute to absurd. Few ancient bodies have been as poked and prodded as the mummy of King Tut, but it does provide clues. So, first I think it best to go back to the beginning, to the first time the mummy was examined.

The Original Autopsy in 1925

Three years passed after Howard Carter discovered KV62 before his team got around to unwrapping and examining the mummy itself. The autopsy was led by an anatomist named Douglass Derry, who had considerable experience working with Egyptian mummies. The irony is, as meticulous as Carter was in painstakingly clearing the artifacts from the tomb, the autopsy was botched. Significant damage was done to the mummy of Tutankhamun. The mummy had been so thickly coated with resins and unguents when placed in its nested coffins 3,300 years ago that it was stuck fast when Derry, Carter, and the others tried to remove it. They ended up disassembling the mummy into numerous pieces. The head came off after a myriad of attempts to pry off the king’s iconic gold burial mask.

The mummy itself was in sorry shape even before Carter came along. As he notes in his publications, both the wrappings and body were heavily carbonized (Carter 2003 ed: 174, 198). This was evidently a chemical reaction due to the layers of resins and unguents that had been applied to the body in the mummification process, and was not associated with any antemortem condition or injury. It contributed to the fragmentation of the mummy during the rough handling in the autopsy.

Carter immediately observed that the mummy was that of a young man but there was no obvious sign of cause of death during the examination (ibid 198). Derry noted a fracture to the left distal femur, to the extent that the left patella (knee cap) was quite loose. It was placed in the mummy’s left hand when the autopsy was completed. The poor condition of the body presented many cracks and fractures, but given the limitations of the time it wasn’t clear if the fracture to the left leg happened before or at the time of death, or if it was the result of rough handling on the part of the embalmers 3,300 years ago.

Carter had hoped to X-ray the mummy of Tutankhamun, but the radiographer died on his way to Egypt.

The team built a tray, filled it with sand, and carefully reassembled the mummy within the sand. This was placed back into one of the coffins and finally into the quartzite sarcophagus, evidently with the hope that no one would notice the fragmented condition of the body.

The First X-rays: Evidence for Murder?

The first X-rays of King Tut were shot in 1968. This was conducted by a team from the University of Liverpool, and led by R.G. Harrison. Further X-rays were shot in 1978 by the University of Michigan, led by James E. Harris. In both cases the X-ray machine was brought to the tomb itself. That said, Harrison’s project was the first time the mummy had been viewed since Carter’s excavation over forty years earlier. Understandably Harrison was surprised to find the mummy in such poor condition; Carter’s little secret was out.

The series of X-rays revealed a number of things, including the oddity that the king’s sternum and frontal ribs were missing. This is a significant and often misunderstood point to which we will be returning. But it was the radiographs of the king’s skull that drew the most attention—at least later on. Neither Harrison nor Harris posited a clear cause of death but images of the skull showed an unusual difference in density to the base of the occipital bone (the bulge at the back of the skull) and a couple of loose bone fragments rattling around in there.

X-ray of King Tut’s skull. Note the loose bone fragment within. The arrow points to the base of the occipital bone.

In March 1999 a researcher named Bob Brier published a book entitled The Murder of Tutankhamen. Brier is not strictly an Egyptologist but is nonetheless a noted leader in the field of paleopathological studies of Egyptian mummies. He is also the first person to have mummified a human body since ancient times, for the sake of a scientific experiment. The experiment was highly successful and earned Brier the nickname of Mr. Mummy.

Brier had observed and studied the X-rays from 1968 and 1978, and wondered at the possibility of assassination. He is hardly the first to posit the idea of Tut’s having been murdered—the idea surfaced almost as quickly as the 1925 autopsy, given how young Tut was when he died. This coupled with the heretical line from which Tutankhamun came, has long made the idea plausible. Brier explored the idea in his book to a depth never before attempted (see Brier 1999). Was it Aye, the shrewd and old official who in fact succeeded Tut on the throne? Or was it Horemheb, the general of the army and thus a very powerful man?

Brier enlisted the aid of an expert investigator who suggested the difference in density to the base of the occipital bone might indicate a subdural hematoma, the result of a vicious blow to the head that resulted in coma and death. Then there are the loose bone fragments—more evidence of a blow to the head.

The idea of subdural hematoma struck me as somewhat plausible. What didn’t, however, was the bone fragments rattling around in the skull. When Tut was mummified late in Dynasty 18 the embalmers removed his brain through his nose, as was commonly done in elite mummifications. Then two courses of resin were poured into the cranial vault, another technique commonly used by ancient embalmers. This is evident in radiographs as opaque masses that solidified at the back as well as the top of the cranial vault.

X-ray showing the courses of hardened resin as a white, opaque mass at the back and top of the cranial vault.

What struck me as decidedly odd is, if the loose bone fragments resulted from a vicious blow to the head, why were the fragments not well embedded into the resin? So back then, while I personally considered assassination as a possibility, I myself was not completely certain of the scenario.

Raging Hippo, Panicked Horse?

A physician named R.W. Harer presented two odd explanations for Tut’s death. The first, in 2006, involved a hippo crushing Tut’s chest in its powerful jaws. The second, in 2011, posited that a horse kicked Tut, collapsing the chest cavity with fatal results (Rühli & Ikram 2013: 8). Both theories were presented at conferences of ARCE (American Research Center in Egypt). Neither theory is impossible. To this day the hippopotamus is one of the most dangerous animals in Africa, and its jaws could easily crush a man. And who knows how many people down through time have been killed by panicked horses?

Harer based his theories on the odd nature of the chest of Tut’s mummy. As I mentioned when describing the original X-ray imaging, the sternum and frontal ribs were missing when the body was examined in 1968. Carter never mentions this condition in his thorough notes, so that has been left unexplained. Harer wasn’t the first to focus on the damaged chest; another researcher explained it as possibly the result of a horrendous chariot accident. The chest was so crushed that the embalmers 3,300 years ago had no choice but to remove and discard the shattered sternum and ribs.

Here is a CT scan image showing the condition of the chest:

CT scan showing missing sternum and ribs, as well as other damage (adapted from Kmt magazine).

The frontal ribs were clearly cut away with a saw. Was this the result of “cleaning-up” work of ancient embalmers, or something else? Also notable is the absence of clavicles (collar bones). Moreover, there appears to be no evidence for the remains of Tut’s heart. The embalmers usually made every attempt to leave the heart in the thoracic cavity (for religious reasons), and though they weren’t always successful, every attempt would be made for a king, certainly.

In my opinion this mystery has been successfully solved, thanks primarily to a careful examination of archival photos conducted in 2007 (see Forbes, Ikram, and Kamrin, 51-56).

Howard Carter’s excavation photographer was Harry Burton, who was one of the finest archaeological photographers of his day. As Carter painstakingly cleared the king’s tomb in the 1920s, Burton photographed everything. This includes the mummy during the autopsy process. Below is a closeup of one of Burton’s photos of the unwrapped mummy prior to reinterment in KV62:

Original photo (1926) of the king’s mummy (adapted from Kmt magazine).

Compare this image with the previous one. In 1926 the chest was still intact. The clavicles were still in place. Note also the beaded cap on the mummified head, which is entirely absent in the previous CT scan image. Over the chest are several necklaces which Carter records in his notes as deliberately left in place because they were stuck firm within the resins coating the body. Perhaps the same was true for the beaded cap. Lastly, note the remains of eyelids. Compare this with a modern photo of Tut’s head:

Head of Tutankhamun as it is today.

In sum total, theories for ancient damage to the chest are probably best abandoned. Something must have happened between 1926, when the mummy was reinterred, and 1968, when it was next officially studied for the purpose of X-raying. In the interim was an event that involved nearly the entire planet: World War II. The theory is that during the war, when in fact the ancient tombs of Egypt were left largely unguarded, modern raiders entered the tomb to retrieve the embedded necklaces and beaded cap from the mummy. They cut through the chest to keep the necklaces intact, causing great damage, and roughly handled the head to remove the beaded cap (thus the frail eyelids disintegrated).

I agree with this theory. It best fists the available evidence thanks to Burton’s photos in 1926 and Harrison’s in 1968. On another note, Burton’s photos show that the king’s penis is intact, while the 1968 photos show it went missing, having broken off the body. It was later found within the bed of sand on which the mummy lies.

Disease?

A recent paper has thoroughly summarized the myriad of diseases different researchers through the years have suggested for Tut’s demise (Rühli & Ikram 2013). We needn’t delve into all of them, but a brief summary is in order. Through the years a number of researchers have posited all manner of ailments, including Marfan syndrome. This one was primarily due to the decidedly odd appearance of artwork in the Amarna Period, the period to which Akhenaten belongs:

Amarna Period stela of Akhenaten and Nefertiti

Akhenaten, his queen Nefertiti, and their daughters (as well as nobility in many cases) are shown with spindly limbs, long digits, drooping faces, overly full lips, wide hips, and pendulous breasts. Some of these characteristics do tend to fit Marfan. However, analysis of royal mummies from the Amarna Period have never shown indications of Marfan syndrome, so this is unlikely. It is more the consensus today that the odd human forms in the bodies of Amarna figures is a religious-artistic expression based on Akhenaten’s religious reforms, in a manner to express androgyny in the human form.

Some researchers have posited Klinefelter’s syndrome, Froehlich’s syndrome, or other disorders of the sort. The main problem here is that such disorders tend to cause infertility, and we know Akhenaten had six daughters (ibid 10). This cannot be the case for Akhenaten, but what if his line passed one of these disorders along to Tut? This also is implausible. Genetic studies of Amarna mummies conducted from 2007 to 2010 have fairly well confirmed that the two still-born infant girls found in KV62 in the 1920s are in fact Tut’s daughters (Hawass et al 2010: 641).

The same genetic tests revealed some interesting things about Tutankhamun, however. Macroscopic studies as well as genetic material have revealed traces of malaria tropica in the boy-king. This may not be what killed him, but it certainly would have weakened him and led to troubled health. On the other hand, in ancient times malaria often would have been fatal, if advanced enough. Also, CT scans during these examinations revealed two metatarsals in the king’s left foot with clear signs of deformation consistent with osteonecrosis (bone death) (ibid 642-643). This infection might also not have caused the king’s death, but there would have been no way in the Late Bronze Age to stop such infection and eventually it might have proved fatal had the king lived long enough. I’ll come back to that, but suffice it to say, by the time Tutankhamun died, he was already evidently weakened and ill.

The Original CT Scans: Questions Answered

Tutankhamun’s mummy was CT scanned for the first time in 2005. As with the X-rays and subsequent CT scanning, the device was brought to the tomb. The CT scanner kept overheating and there were jokes about the curse of King Tut, but several cheap fans aimed at the machine circumvented the curse.

Tut’s age at death has been variously estimated down through the years as anywhere between seventeen to twenty-seven years (Hawass 2005: 33). The CT scans in 2005 placed the estimate at eighteen or nineteen years of age at death, on which most researchers agree today.

The original CT scans is where the osteonecrosis of the left foot was first noticed. The king’s left foot was somewhat deformed and must have been painful. Telling is the fact that a great many walking sticks were found in the tomb when Carter cleared it in the 1920s. I was one, I must admit, who always pooh-poohed this as relevant to the king’s health because kings and noblemen were often buried with walking sticks. They were symbols of authority in pharaonic times. I should have known better. Tut’s tomb contained an overabundance of them. Subsequent analysis of these walking sticks show wear and tear to the tips of many of them, so clearly Tut needed them in life. His left foot was unstable.

The CT scans were very important in other ways. They were able to disprove a blow to the head as cause of death. Recall Bob Brier’s theory I mentioned earlier. The CT scans proved the difference in density at the base of the occipital bone was not related to any sort of injury. And the bone fragments rattling around in the cranial vault were identified as broken pieces of a cervical vertebra and part of the foramen magnum (ibid 34), the hole at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes. These fragments were more than likely broken loose in 1925 when Douglass Derry, Howard Carter, and the rest of the team were vigorously prying the gold burial mask off the mummy’s head.

As I mentioned earlier, during the original autopsy in 1925 Derry noticed a broken left leg. The fracture was at the epiphysis (growth plate) right above the left knee. The following images show the location of the fracture on the king’s leg:

Details of the king’s distal left femur. The arrow in the image at left points to the site of the fracture.

Now, the king’s body is covered with cracks and fractures, most hairline in nature. The mummy was found to be in poor shape in 1925. The carbonization that occurred naturally to the body down through time did a lot of damage. However, in this case, most of the scientists and researchers who examined the fracture were in agreement that the resins the embalmers had applied to the body during mummification, seeped into the wound itself. This means the wound must have been there prior to the mummification process.

This in turn indicates it must have been an injury sustained at or around the time of death.

What, Then, Killed King Tut?

I must stress again as I bring this to a close that there is no universal agreement on the cause of death of the famous boy-king. My article should make this much clear. However, I personally find much to agree with in the theory reached by Hawass and his team following the 2005 CT scans.

Tut was buried with six disassembled chariots in his tomb. He was clearly a typical teenager with a need for speed. Remember the left foot with the osteonecrosis, which is tied into this. A popular theory is that one day in the eighteenth year of Tutankhamun’s life, he was out riding one of his chariots when he hit a nasty bump. He was tossed upwards in the chariot, and came down on his unstable left foot, which couldn’t support his weight. He toppled out of the rapidly moving chariot and landed on his left leg, which shattered at the epiphyseal plate above the left knee. The damage was such that the kneecap was torn loose.

This would not have been survivable in the Late Bronze Age. While ancient Egyptian physicians were adept at treating many kinds of fractures, as is evident in human remains from that time, a compound fracture with such devastating injury would’ve been fatal. The fracture itself wasn’t the mechanism of death, but inevitable infection would have been. Tut more than likely died from gangrene.

Can we be sure it was a chariot accident? To this point in time no ancient Egyptian newspaper has been found reporting Tut’s lethal accident, but kidding aside, we can never be sure. It’s just a popular theory. Such an injury could just as easily been sustained in battle, perhaps from a Hittite battle axe, and there is evidence to suggest Tut himself led his army into battle at least once. But that, too, can only be a theory.

We will never know for certain how it happened, but I for one agree Tutankhamun died from infection after shattering his left leg 3,300 years ago.

I thank you for your time and attention. As always, I welcome comments and questions.

Archival photo from the New York Times, 1936. Note the giant skeleton nestled against the ruined wall.

Recent research led to a goldmine. A friend of mine who works in the archival department of the New York Times was looking for some information for an article on the history of archaeology in Egypt, when he came across the above image and the scanned article at right. The article dates to 1936 but does not mention the name of the staff writer. My friend prefers to remain anonymous (I’ll call him “Jonas”) because these items were in an old folder marked CONFIDENTIAL, and he doesn’t wish to get into trouble. A memo paper-clipped to the folder, Jonas explained in the email to which these items were attached, had words to the effect that this was deemed to be of a highly sensitive nature and was never meant for public consumption.

It’s possible whatever archaeological team was conducting the dig when the giant skeleton was unearthed, felt it better to keep everything secret. Probably the academic institution to which this team was attached was the impetus for the secrecy—academia does not like to upset its applecart. The article mentions a photographer named Henry Leichter who was working at the time for the University of Chicago (Oriental Institute), but neither Jonas nor I have been able to determine if it is this university which wished to bury the shocking discovery of 1936.

But due to my friend’s plucky spirit, it need be buried no more. He and I have brought the truth to light. I’m glad Jonas remembered my love of all things ancient Egyptian, and that I write this blog, so here we have found a way to publish what had been hidden from the public eye.

What’s more, everything in the above paragraphs is a steaming load of bullcrap. I made it up. All of it. I Photoshopped the photograph, as well as typed the “article” and used Photoshop to give it an aged look. It was quite fun. Oh, and I don’t have a friend who works for the New York Times. I don’t think I even know anyone who works for the New York Times.

You readers who are familiar with my blog either knew straight away that I was pulling your leg or must have quickly begun to wonder if I had fallen off the edge of sanity. But the above photo as well as the fake article are of the type you see all over the internet, on half-baked web pages professing to offer “proof” that the ancient world was populated by giant humans.

After all, giants are mentioned several times in the Old Testament (see Genesis 6:4 as an example). The Bible wouldn’t mislead us, would it? The original word in ancient Hebrew is Nephilim, which is most likely a loan word from the Aramaic naphil, which does in fact mean “giant” (see Heiser, sitchiniswrong.com). So it must be true, then, right?

Perhaps not. The day ancient religious texts are the sole means by which we analyze and study ancient civilizations, is the day on which we must concede that we’ve abandoned the greater amount of our common sense. I am not demeaning the Bible, mind you. It is rightfully the greatest book ever written, but it’s not a history book.

I’m sure many of you have seen the Photoshopped images I mentioned. Just Google “ancient giants” in Images and you come up with all sorts of hits. The following photo is a good example:

Some of these fake images are very well done, and I must admit many of them are better than the one I slapped together at the top of this article. This one here is quite realistic, except for the fact that the shadow of the skeleton in its pit and the shadow of the squatting man are extending in opposite directions. Quite a few of the fake photos out there have obvious mistakes. But many do not, and they look quite convincing.

That doesn’t make them authentic, of course. Anyone who has Photoshop, as well as most any sort of word-processing program to type out a “newspaper article” can put together real-looking images. Common sense alone is what should be the determining factor. Most of us will see such images and chuckle, but certain people out there will see such an image and think it’s rock-hard proof. That’s unfortunate.

Ancient Egypt is a favorite for the folks who want to believe in giants roaming the world of millennia ago. Certain things about the great pharaonic culture make it simple for the hoaxers to use Egypt, as well as for the gullible to fall for it.

For example, look at wall depictions of the great pharaohs. Here’s one of Ramesses II charing forth on his chariot into battle at Kadesh in Syria:

Ramesses II, Battle of Kadesh, Dynasty 19

This was an actual battle which took place in 1274 BCE, early in Ramesses’ reign. The Egyptians faced the Hittites at Kadesh, and although no clear winner was determined, Ramesses covered the walls of several temples with such battle scenes not only to make it seem as though the Egyptians had won but, of course, to show his own great prowess and courage.

Look below the figures of the rearing horses pulling Ramesses’ chariot. You will notice itty-bitty Hittite soldiers. They’re fleeing in the face of the great Egyptian pharaoh, who is clearly a literal giant because he is shown in the scene as towering above them.

The same sort of depiction is seen in countless Egyptian tombs and on funeral stelae and other monuments, such as this one dating to Dynasty 11 (2160-1781 BCE):

Scene from a Dynasty 11 funerary stela

It’s beautifully cut and inscribed. At right are seated a husband and wife in the act of receiving offerings. Chances are, both of them were deceased when this monument was made. But look to the left and you’ll see who’s presenting the offerings: tiny little servants. Clearly, then, it was not only the royals who were giants, but also many of the people in the ranks of the elite.

Many of you may be aware of why the ancient Egyptians produced art this way, but even so, if some of you readers do not know why this was done, I’m willing to bet you’re not going to chalk it up to giants. It’s that common sense thing, again.

For those who would like to know the explanation, it’s due to a principle modern art historians call hierarchical scaling. Whether the ancient Egyptians even had a word for it is not of importance, because it was simply part of their artistic traditions and practices from the very dawn of their kingdom at the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Basically, in any scene where more than one person was shown, the figure of most importance and greatest status in that scene was usually depicted as physically larger than the other people (Robins 2008: 21). The bigger the better, in other words. Kings are usually shown the largest in any given scene, of course, with the exception of deities appearing in the same scene; in such cases the king is often shown at the same scale as deities, but any other human figure usually will look diminutive. Where a male and female are shown together, often the male is shown larger, including depictions of kings and queens. This was not a universal practice, of course, as you can see in the stela of the husband and wife above. And on occasion kings and queens when shown together were sometimes of equal size, which is evident in the artwork of several pharaohs such as Amunhotep III and Queen Tiye, Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti, and Ramesses II and Queen Nefertari.

But the pro-giants crowd will find exceptions to the rule. The following scene is often used to show ancient giants:

Scene from the tomb of Rekhmire, Dynasty 18

I’ve seen this scene used to show that even regular workmen could be giants. A handy thing to have around for all of those huge buildings the Egyptians erected. The giants crowd would have you believe this is a depiction of workmen cutting blocks of masonry, and carrying them with ease, for the building of the Great Pyramid. (I’ve also seen this depiction used by the crowd which believes the Great Pyramid was composed of blocks made from a poured synthetic stone, which is being produced here—an idea with little scientific corroboration and perhaps the subject of a future article for me.)

The scene comes from the tomb of Rekhmire, a powerful nobleman who served as a vizier under both Tuthmosis III and Amunhotep II, in Dynasty 18. He lived around 1420 BCE. His tomb (TT100) is in western Thebes, the most popular burial ground through most of the New Kingdom. TT100 is particularly famous for its rich depictions of all manner of workmen and craftsmen performing their labors, under the steady supervision of the great vizier himself.

What we have here is a good example of people in the fringe camp seeing an image but not knowing how to interpret it, nor decipher what it meant to the ancient Egyptians. I rather doubt the ancients would care how someone living over 3,000 years later would understand such scenes, other than to be offended by extremes in misdirection.

The Great Pyramid was built around 2500 BCE, in Dynasty 4. Again, Rekhmire was a nobleman of Dynasty 18, over a thousand years after the time of the Great Pyramid. By Rekhmire’s time, in fact, pyramids were no longer even part of royal burials. The religion of the state had changed considerably since the days of the Old Kingdom.

As is the case with so many ancient tomb depictions, the figures in TT100 are accompanied by hieroglyphic captions which explain what they’re doing. In the case of the scene shown above, the caption for these workers states that they’re “Molding bricks to build a magazine anew [for the Temple] of Karnak” (Hodel-Hoenes 2000: 162). It’s notable that the Karnak temple is explicitly mentioned, which alone discounts any connection with the Great Pyramid or any other monument far to the north at Giza. A “magazine” is a modern term used to describe the ancient Egyptian word for storehouse. These ancient storehouses were often made from small mud bricks, which the men are shown making and carrying. The men themselves comprise a group of Syrian and Nubian prisoners of war (ibid); such men were often bought back to Egypt as labor-slaves. So, no, they’re not giants.

Even animals are singled out as “giants.” You might have noticed this with the horses pulling Ramesses’ chariot in the earlier photo—even the horses are much larger than the Hittite enemies over whom they are rearing. But you will see many images in which animals appear to be gigantic, sometimes even towering over royals:

Relief showing the goddess Hathor in bovine form

Here a pharaoh is shown drinking from the utters of an enormous cow—certain proof that giant animals once roamed the Nile Valley? No, probably not. Inscriptions are not evident in this scene and it’s not like I have all of them memorized, but based on the iconography of the cow (e.g., sun disk and diminutive king) I think I’m safe in identifying it as the common bovine manifestation of the goddess Hathor. As with other important deities Hathor had a very busy job description and performed a number of roles, and one of the most important was as the divine mother-figure to the king; she is the nurturing bovine (Wilkinson 2003: 141). Here, the king is as a child gaining nourishment from his mother’s breast. In other such depictions the king is shown standing in front of the divine bovine, whose head extends protectively over and beyond the king.

There are also those monuments where kings and queens are depicted along with their royal children. This is a common motif in the Amarna Period during the reign of Akhenaten. But a good example for our purposes here is the Small Temple of Abu Simbel, which Ramesses II commissioned for his queen Nefertari. The facade of this magnificent temple is illustrative:

Facade of the Small Temple at Abu Simbel, Dynasty 19

The colossal statues represent Ramesses II and Nefertari. They are indeed gigantic. Look to the sides of their legs and you will see small statues of their children; included here are princes Meryatum, Meryre, Rahirwenemef and Amun-her-khepeshef; and princesses Meritamun and Henuttawy. It would seem, if Ramesses II and Nefertari were actually literal giants, they were giving birth to runts. No wonder the giants died out.

I jest.

What might the archaeological record show? After so many years of people excavating the land of Egypt, where are the remains of giant humans? We are obligated to dismiss cleverly Photoshopped internet images, so what we’re left with is rather disappointing to the pro-giants crowd. No giant skeleton has ever been found. Anywhere. Historians and scientists have been studying the human remains of ancient Egyptians for many years now, and what we learn is that the ancient Egyptians were of the same physical stature and size of pretty much everyone else in the ancient Mediterranean world. Men averaged 5’3″ and women 4’10” (Nunn 1996: 20). These were not gigantic people, of course.

Some of them were pretty damn tall, however. Their height in life can be determined forensically in several different ways, but a well-preserved mummy certainly helps. Such is the case with Ramesses II, who is one of the best preserved of them all:

The mummy of Ramesses II, Dynasty 19

In life Ramesses II was probably around 5’8,” which is almost as unusual as the fact that he probably died at around 90 years of age (in a time when the average lifespan was around 35 years). Also pretty tall for his time was the boy-king, Tutankhamun:

The mummy of Tutankhamun, Dynasty 18

Tut’s is not the best-looking mummy on record, but in life this young man stood at about 5’6″, a good three inches taller than most adult men in the Bronze Age.

In my own years of research, the tallest ancient Egyptian of whom I’m aware is a man whose name no one even knows. He goes by the designation of Unknown Man E:

The mummy of Unknown Man E, New Kingdom

Unknown Man E is rather infamous for his particularly ghoulish appearance. Early historians first thought he had been violently killed or mummified alive, but there is no evidence to prove either. The prominent researcher Bob Brier has argued that this is the body of a prince of Dynasty 20 named Pentaweret, who was involved with the harem conspiracy of Ramesses III and was forced to commit suicide by ingesting poison. It is an attractive theory but not proven. Unknown Man E was not mummified but seems to have been naturally preserved inside the uninscribed coffin in which he’d been interred. Consensus is that he lived in the New Kingdom.

Unknown Man E is quite well preserved for someone who was not mummified, but that’s sometimes how it worked out when people were buried in the arid environment of the desert. Most unusual, however, is that in life this man was around 5’9″ tall.

Quite a tall man, in other words. But not a giant.

Considering this, I often think of David and Goliath. If there is any truth to this biblical tale, David was probably a man of ordinary height (around 5’3″) while Goliath could’ve been something like a towering 6’2″. Now, to the average man of the ancient Near East, that would’ve been a giant.

We can think of modern people who’ve suffered from disorders like gigantism. Such people can grow to between seven and nine feet. These are indeed giants among us. But as is well understood, gigantism is a disorder caused by the over-production of growth hormones, and folks afflicted with it suffer from all manner of complications. Human beings are not meant to grow to such heights.

The archaeological record is silent on the subject of a race of giants. Ancient man was, indeed, considerably shorter than the average modern man. Depictions of colossal figures must be understood in the context in which they were created in wall paintings and other monuments. Perhaps most important, no one should fall for cleverly devised Photoshopped images and fake newspaper articles. When we dig deeper and evaluate things from the right perspective, we find the real answers.

This brings me to my concluding point, and I had some fun with it in the fake 1936 newspaper article I concocted at the top of the page. People of the pro-giants crowd well understand, I think, how silent real-world evidence is for giants, so they frequently turn to the one desperate measure left to them: they claim the world of academia is conspiring to hide “the truth” from all of us. I wrote about this in my recent article Tactics of the Fringe. Not only is such a claim desperate, it is quite divorced from reality. Such folks would have us believe that all archaeologists and Egyptologists and historians and other specialists who’ve been at work in Egypt for the past two centuries, have worked in concert to conceal ancient giant humans from us. All this reveals is the pro-giants crowd has no real understanding of the world of academia. If they possessed an understanding, they would know such a grand and all-encompassing conspiracy could not survive a few years, much less 200 of them.

Giants are a myth.

As always, I thank you for reading my article, and I welcome comments and questions.